1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a modular, nodal monitoring device and system. More specifically, the invention relates to a self-contained and stand-alone monitoring device. A system may be made up of a plurality of such devices, each of which can communicate with any other such device within the system and operate both as a system client and a system server to any other devices within the system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Video monitoring and surveillance of locations or areas for security, safety monitoring, asset protection, process control, and other such applications by use of closed circuit television and similar systems have been in widespread use for many years. The cost of these systems has come down significantly in recent years as the camera and monitor components have steadily dropped in cost while increasing in quality. As a result, these systems have proliferated in their application and are proving extremely useful for municipal, commercial, and residential applications.
Existing monitoring systems, however, suffer from a number of drawbacks relating to their use of a centralized network topology. Video and data from remotely-located units are transmitted via wireless communication to a centralized server for storage and viewing. One problem with that approach, however, is that in applications requiring a large number of units, available wireless bandwidth may limit the amount of data that can be transmitted to the server, especially considering that transmitting video, even compressed, is very bandwidth intensive. Range can also be an issue given that, all else equal range decreases as bandwidth increases.
The alternative to wireless communication is providing a hardwired, high-speed connection to each monitoring unit. That, however, is expensive and has to be rewired in the event a unit is moved to a new location.
In addition, because units of existing systems are not capable of stand-alone operation, they require connection to a server, even if only for receiving, storing, and processing the captured video and data. This significantly increases the costs per unit for applications with a relative low number of units.